California lawmakers introduce plan to end surprise ER bills

Re:California lawmakers introduce plan to end surprise ER bills by uberduber on Monday February 25, 2019 @01:33PM (#19248074)

This used to be true but is no longer so. Almost every hospital would negotiate with you if they could see that you had no money or were willing to pay a lump sum. You could end up paying 4-10x medicare rate.

However, starting about 5 years ago some hospital got the idea they could refuse to negotiate with everyone and it seems to have spread. Now there are a bunch of these unreasonable hospitals. You can open up all your finances and show that you have no money and that their bill is 100x medicare rate and they would rather get $0 and you declare bankruptcy. I guess they end up getting more revenue overall this way?

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Re:California lawmakers introduce plan to end surprise ER bills by jjoonathan on Monday February 25, 2019 @01:40PM (#19248127)

Of course they do! "Rely on the mercy of a for-profit (or faux not-for-profit) organization to whom you have already handed a blank check" is a terrible plan, nobody should be surprised that it doesn't work very well, and the people who propose it as anything other than a desperate hail-mary should be ashamed of themselves.

gowld, I'm looking at you.

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